The last four Walker sisters pictured in 1946. From left are Louisa, Hettie, Martha and Margaret.

The Walker sisters’ cabin the way it looked when they lived there.

A young Louisa Walker, the poetry writer of the family.

Strolling up the old gravel road from Little Greenbrier Schoolhouse to the old Walker sisters’ cabin, filled with sights and sounds of a babbling stream and birds singing in lush green forest, it is easy to understand why it would have been hard for the celebrated sisters to leave such an idyllic setting.

The Walker sisters could not possibly have known the notoriety they would receive when the six spinster siblings made the monumental decision to remain in the only home they have ever known when the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established.

They watched as their lifelong neighbors moved away after selling their property the National Park Service.

The old cabin the Walker sisters called home was located on a 400-acre portion of a farm that Brice McFalls acquired in 1838 from the 2,000 acre tract owned by John Renfro. McFalls cleared a spot and constructed the first rough cabin on the property.

In 1853, Wiley King acquired the land and the existing cabin and began another cabin nearby that his sons completed as a two-room, two-story dwelling. John N. Walker obtained part of the farm and house when he married Wiley King’s youngest daughter, Margaret Jane, in 1866. Walker later obtained more of the property by buying out Margaret’s brothers and sisters. The Walker Farm eventually consisted of 122 acres.

John Walker, who was known as “Hairy John” because of his long beard, returned to the mountains after fighting for the Union army and being held prisoner in the Confederacy’s notorious Andersonville prison during the Civil War. He married Margaret on March 29, 1866.

John was a skilled carpenter, blacksmith and orchard keeper. Margaret was known for her courage and fortitude.

One day she heard a commotion in the hen house and, upon investigation, found a weasel about to run out off with one of her chickens. Margaret reached down and grabbed the varmint, whereupon it latched onto her thumb. She calmly proceeded over to a washtub and plunged her hand in the water until the predator drowned.

As John and Margaret’s family grew, John disassembled the old a McFalls cabin and put parts of it back together onto the main house to serve as the kitchen, and added a front porch.

The farm included several outbuildings. There was a barn, pig pen, corncrib, smokehouse, apple house, blacksmith shop and a small tub mill on Rocky Branch. The Walker family never had running water or indoor plumbing (curiously, not even an outhouse). They drew water from a clear, flowing spring protected by a log springhouse, which was used to keep milk, butter and cheese cool.

By the time the National Park was established John and Margaret had passed on. Their four sons, James Thomas, William Wiley, John Henry and Giles Daniel, were married and moved out of the family home.

Of the seven daughters, only Sarah Caroline married. She married Jim Shelton who often said that the reason the others sisters never married was because he was the only man who had the courage to bust up the family or, else, they all got discouraged when they couldn’t get him and just quit.

The six sisters who remained at home: Margaret Jane, Mary “Polly” Elizabeth, Martha Ann, Nancy Matilda, Louisa Susan and Hettie Rebecca. Polly was once engaged but her fiancé died. She was never able to overcome her grief. Martha Ann also suffered the loss of the man she had promised to marry.

Nancy died in 1931, leaving five sisters living together in the 20-by-22-foot cabin at the time the national park was established in 1934.

The resourceful women possessed their own personalities, talents and interests. Margaret Jane, the eldest and her mother’s namesake, was the stern and practical sister who made the decisions around the house. She was a devoutly religious woman who loved to sing hymns and quote scripture.

Martha Ann was the family accountant. She was the one who kept track what they owed and who they paid. She also administered the catalog ordering for the entire family. Nancy was a fine seamstress and needle-worker, skills requiring patience and attention to detail. The youngest sister, Hettie was an excellent cook and knitter.

Although Louisa was called the “jack of all trades” and often giggled around company, she was the sister who loved to express her thoughts in the form of poetry. More than a dreamer, she carried her share of the weight working in the fields and chopping wood. In spite of a very limited education or mastery of spelling, Louisa penned beautiful illustrated poems extolling her feelings.

In an article that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1946, reporter John Maloney offered the following description “Louisa, with fun loving brown eyes and a perpetual smile hears poetry in the wind and sees it in every moss colored rock and wild flower. Mountain people in many other valleys here recite them at school or church, and some of them, despite the fact that her construction and spelling may follow rules she personally invented, and have a quaint and mystic appeal.”

She sold her neatly written and illustrated poems for as little as 25 cents and as much as $1 to visitors. Numerous examples of her work survive in private collections and the Great Smoky Mountains Association archives.

Upset because a bear had terrorized their farm, Louisa wrote the following lines:

The Bear

I have no friendship

With the bear

He will kill your calf

And never care.

When I am near him

I want him to be asleep

He will sneak to your pasture

And kill your sheep.

Or go to your cornfield

Some early morn

And tear down

A big field of corn

Through the thicket hollows

He will crawl

An growl as though

He owns it all.

Louisa penned the following words to express her feelings and the sentiments of many neighbors at the time her family was negotiating with the national park service over the ownership transfer of their farm:

My Mountain Home

There’s an old weather bettion home

That stands near a wood

With an orchard near by it

For almost a hundred years it has stood.

It was my home in infency

It sheltered me in youth

When I tell you I love it

I tell you the truth.

For years it sheltered

By day and night

From the summer’s heat

And the cold winter blight.

But now the park commissioner

Comes all dressed up so gay

Saying this old house of yours

We must now take away.

They coax and they wheedle

They fret they bark

Saying we have to have this place

For a National Park.

For us poor mountain people

They don’t have a care

Bust must have a home for

The wolf the lion and the bear.

But many of us have a title

That is sure and will hold

To the City of Peace

Where the streets are pure gold.

There no lion in its fury

Those paths ever trod

It is the home of the soul

In the presence of God.

When we reach the portles

Of glory so fair

The wolf cannot enter

Neither the lion or bear.

And no park commissioner

Will ever dar

To desturbe or molest

Or take our home from there.

The last survivor among the six spinster sisters, Louisa passed away in 1964. The old cabin, restored in 1976 by the park service, remains a popular destination for park visitors. People of all ages sit on the old porch and try to image a bygone era and the fortitude of the six determined sisters.

Louisa’s ability to express her feelings has helped preserve their legacy and create a sense of time and place.

— Carroll McMahan is the special projects facilitator for the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce. The Upland Chronicles series celebrates the heritage and past of Sevier County. If you have suggestions for future topics, would like to submit a column or have comments, please contact Carroll McMahan at 453-6411 or email to cmcmahan@scoc.org; or Ron Rader at 604-9161 or email to ron@ronraderproperties.com.